NAJAF, Aug 28: A team of Iraqi ministers visited battle-scarred Najaf on Saturday and discussed plans for rebuilding the holy city after three weeks of fighting that killed hundreds and drove oil prices to record highs.
The five ministers drove through a shattered urban landscape, inspected the city's Imam Ali Mosque and held talks with Iraq's most revered Shia leader, Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, who brokered a deal to end the clashes.
After inspecting the shrine a minister said it was now free of weapons and the government hoped to reopen it to the public within 10 days.
Fighting between the Mehdi Army militia of Moqtada al Sadr, who had been holed up in the shrine during their uprising, and US and Iraqi forces ended on Thursday when Ayatollah Sistani returned after medical treatment in London to Najaf.
"We have come to Najaf to consolidate the peace settlement we reached and to congratulate Sistani," Minister of State Kasim Daoud, who led the delegation, said.
The ministers arrived outside Najaf in two Black Hawk helicopters and were driven through streets littered with wreckage and ammunition into its old city in a convoy led by police cars with sirens wailing.
The ministers held a 20-minute meeting with Ayatollah Sistani to discuss the government's plan to rebuild Najaf and to restore water, electricity, sewage and hospital services.
Surveying Najaf streets strewn with mangled vehicles and mortar shells, the ministers promised the city would be rebuilt.
"The destruction is huge," Health Minister Alaadin Alwan said. "Najaf is going to be a big priority in the budget of the government. It needs a great deal of work to rebuild it." Public Works Minister Nasreen Berwari said the government would "bring Najaf back to what it was before the war".
Under the peace deal brokered by Ayatollah Sistani, Moqtada Sadr's armed fighters and US forces withdrew from the area and security was handed over to Iraqi police. The government agreed not to arrest Sadr and pledged to fund the city's rebuilding.
Dazed residents said reconstruction would be a huge task.
"The only thing the fighting accomplished was the destruction of Najaf. Look at our hotel. We were just making progress building it," said hotel employee Rafaat Maher, standing on a balcony pockmarked by bullets and looking down on a makeshift roadside graveyard for victims of the fighting.
"They are not rebuilding Iraq. They are destroying it," he said. "I must have seen 100 people buried right there in front of the hotel."
After Saddam Hussein's fall, residents of Najaf hoped for peace and prosperity, with the city's holy sites attracting Shias from all over the world. Hotels and businesses sprang up.
But fighting between Sadr's militiamen and US forces has taken a heavy toll.
At one makeshift graveyard, residents exhumed the bodies of people they said were militants from Sadr's Mehdi Army and a few civilians. The fighters' names were written on pieces of paper stuffed into small medicine bottles and placed above the graves. They were described as "hero martyrs".
RENEWED VIOLENCE: Najaf seemed peaceful, but violence elsewhere in Iraq showed the size of the task facing interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi as he prepares for elections in January.
In the predominantly Shia slum district of Sadr City in Baghdad - from where Moqtada Sadr draws much support - Iraqis clashed with US troops, witnesses said, in a reminder that the Najaf peace deal did not end the animosity of Sadr's followers towards the US-led occupation of their country.
In Fallujah, a city west of Baghdad that is seen as a haven for guerillas, US planes bombed targets in an eastern district. Ahmed Ali, a doctor, said two women and a man were killed when bombs demolished their house.
US forces have mounted several air raids on Falluja this month, and say they are aiming to destroy foreign fighters loyal to Al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al Zarqawi. -Reuters
